Blending Roald Dahl's characteristically dark sensibilities into a vibrant and decidedly family-friendly night out, Sam Mendes's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is showing no signs of flagging as it enters its second year on the West End stage. David Greig's adaptation preserves all the escapist wonder of Dahl's book, in which the impoverished Charlie Bucket wins one of five priceless Golden Tickets against all the odds, and is transported into the joyously inventive and occasionally terrifying world of Wily Wonka's secrecy-shrouded chocolate factory.

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The first act whisks you energetically through a colourful array of settings and musical tones, beginning in the cosy shack where Charlie and his extended family live in abject but cheerful poverty. Through a giant TV set (one of several witty and creative pieces of stagecraft) we witness interviews with the first four golden ticket winners, each of them obnoxious in their own distinct and comeuppance-inviting way.

One of the cleverest things Greig does is modernise the doomed brats - Violet Beauregarde becomes a celebrity kid in the vein of Willow Smith, while tech-head Mike Teavee is an openly hostile amateur hacker whose addiction is gaming rather than TV.

Alex Jennings, taking over from Douglas Hodge, creates a Wonka markedly different from either of the well-known big screen incarnations, less manic than Gene Wilder's, and infinitely less sinister than Johnny Depp's. There's a dry humor and sense of world-weariness to Jennings's understated mad scientist, as he half-heartedly shepherds these awful children and their awful parents - plus the endearingly earnest Charlie and Grandpa Joe - around his glorious, impossible factory.

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The set looks like a million dollars in the most literal sense, its flamboyantly ramshackle surface belying meticulous construction. In contrast to Matilda (now well into its third prosperous year in the West End), Charlie is one of Dahl's most high-concept novels and comes with a stack of logistical challenges on-stage. While the limitations are very clear in the largely stationary rendering of Wonka's Oompa-Loompas and trained squirrels, other set pieces come to life with thrilling style - from Violet's expansion into a giant inflated blueberry to the Great Glass Elevator that inspired Dahl's sequel.

This is at its core a blackly comedic morality tale, and far from glossing over the variously grim fates that befall the children, Greig and Mendes actually make their fates even bleaker in places. The screen-addicted Mike's storyline ends up on a particularly morbid note that spotlights Josefina Gabrielle as his smiling, gin-guzzling Stepford mom.

The biggest stumbling block for a generally buoyant show is Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman's score, which plays more like a cobbled-together collection of disparate ideas than a coherent core around which to build a new musical. There are no true standout songs, the one exception being a climactic performance of 'Pure Imagination' which is, of course, lifted wholesale from 1971's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Still, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remains a spectacularly entertaining and confidently executed show, the kind of crowd-pleasing classic that could enjoy a very long future in the West End.